Mississippi Delta Dues is a complete departure from Mickey Baker's landmark 1950s electric guitar work for Ray Charles and others. With acoustic bottleneck specialist Stefan Grossman at his side and surprisingly backed by the London Strings Orchestra, the talented guitarist covers a variety of tunes by long-dead bluesmen. Excluding the bonus tracks, this was previously released as House of the Blues, Vol. 5 on the Blue Star label.

Virtuoso acoustic wizard and fingerstyle master, Tim Sparks presents Fingerstyle Roots, Rags & Blues, an insightful exploration of Early Americana Roots music and intensive fingerstyle study program for intermediate and advanced students. Fingerstyle Roots, Rags & Blues covers Delta Blues, Country Gospel, New Orleans, Ragtime, Early Jazz and the most amazing version of "The Mississippi Blues" that we've ever seen performed or heard here at TrueFire. The tunes in this collection evoke a time when American Roots music crystallized and was transformed by the effects of recordings and radio. Some of these selections were written for guitar, others are adaptations from piano and jazz band arrangements. A long list of Roots Music fingerstyle guitarists particularly influenced the material covered in Fingerstyle Roots, Rags & Blues; Duck Baker, Pat Donohue, Woody Mann, Steve James, Eric Lugosch, Eric Schonberg, Ernie Hawkins, Dakota Dave Hull, Phil Heywood, Guy van Duser, Lasse Johansson, Andy Ellis and Teja Gerken.

Nothing obsessed explorers of the mid-nineteenth century more than the quest to discover the source of the White Nile. It was the planet's most elusive secret, the prize coveted above all others. Between 1856 and 1876, six larger-than-life men and one extraordinary woman accepted the challenge. Showing extreme courage and resilience, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, Samuel Baker, Florence von Sass, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley risked their lives and reputations in the fierce competition. Award-winning author Tim Jeal deploys fascinating new research to provide a vivid tableau of the unmapped "Dark Continent," its jungle deprivations, and the courage-as well as malicious tactics-of the explorers.

This disc strikes me as an ideal introduction to the music of Turkey’s greatest composer. Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s style might be described as “Szymanowski with a primal rhythmic feel.” If you love the composer’s First Violin Concerto then you will find here a very similar exoticism, nocturnal atmosphere, and love of voluptuous textures. The harmonic style is intensely chromatic, but also highly melodic. Like Bartók in his last period, Saygun’s handling of tonality mellowed toward the end of his life, which makes the Cello Concerto more consonant than the Viola Concerto, but both works are absolutely gorgeous and masterpieces of their kind. It’s positively criminal that no one plays these pieces regularly in concert. The performances here are excellent. Tim Hugh is a well-known cellist, and he pours on the tone with all of the rhapsodic abandon that Saygun requires. Mirjam Tschopp also is a superb violist, with a big, beefy tone that never gets swamped by the intricate orchestration. It’s also very rewarding to hear a Turkish orchestra in this music–and to find that it plays beautifully under Howard Griffiths.

The quality of Chet Baker's product was so varied during the last decade or more of his life that recording sessions varied markedly. For this "remixed version" of Mr. B Baker sounds a tad tired, though his chops are in fine form. The studio recording captures the trumpeter with highly sympathetic and self-effacing pianist Michel Grallier and bassist Ricardo Del Fra, both of whom engage in the leader's brand of sensitivity. There are no vocals by the trumpeter, but plenty of improvising. The interesting tune selection features a few songs played often by Baker (such as Wayne Shorter's "Dolphin Dance" and Horace Silver's "Strollin'"), but several that are not associated with him at all (Grallier's "White Blues" and his gorgeous "Father X-mas," to name a couple). There is a sadness permeating the trumpeter's sound throughout, exacerbated by the lazy, sometimes sluggish, tempos. A deep and touching beauty can be felt, marking this as one of Chet's best from the period.